I was once told that in the business world a “learning opportunity” is just a translation for “I went through some pain or a loss of money”, and “experience” is just a collection of learning opportunities. So why is it that we feel the need to collectively gain experience on our career path? To quote a poplar hip hop artist Earl Simmons, “sometimes it takes pain to make the brain smarter” is a statement that many have lived first hand including yours truly, so I am here to share my experience with you on these matters.
How can we still reduce the impact of a learning opportunity while gaining a form of experience? We rely upon other people’s experiences by putting in plans. With recent events this past year the contingency plans of many companies were put to the test, these plans can also be called BC/DR (Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery) plans and have been around for many years. In the late 1990’s at the turn of the century businesses had a plan for the roll over to 2000, planning paid off as there were very few if any disruptions to services and utilities that we all feared would come to a grinding halt. Only until after the tragic events of September 11th 2001 did companies start to take a look at BC/DR plans and put effort and credence into business continuity planning. The fact that buildings, infrastructure, and services can come to an abrupt end became the focus for many executives who were now faced with a learning opportunity to gain experience in a new lesson of running a business.
The collective business community has gained experience in the form of time at the turn of the century, disaster in the form of terrorism, disaster in the form of natural events like Fukashima 2011, and now in the form of a pandemic. But what is next? No one knows exactly what is next, but we can still plan for it, by dusting off the contingency plan and incorporating some of the trends that have been occurring in the technological industry.
Many of the events that have occurred in the recent years are horrific and life changing disasters but it doesn’t take the magnitude of a terrorist strike or a raging tsunami to level a business, it can be as simple as an employee clicking on a link embedded in a phishing email to unleash an encryption attack or devious actions as shutting down a platform for political or social unrest reasons.
The commodity under attack in all cases is data, the data owned by a company is its lifeblood and if that lifeblood is not protected by an evolving business continuity / disaster recovery plan the risk for a “learning opportunity” is quite high. With the wide adoption of public cloud computing planning for rapid data mobility, protection and recovery should be at the foundation of every CEO’s business continuity plan.
For more information on creating and updating a BC/DR plan, or introducing data mobility in your environment feel free to reach out to Komodo Cloud for a “pleasant experience” .
Stay well,
Joseph Noga
CTO of Komodo Cloud